Dollops of Truth Updated: Jan 04, 2024 *** When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning - how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse. *** The VERY BIG STUPID is a thing which breeds by eating The Future. Have you seen it? It sometimes disguises itself as a good-looking quarterly bottom line, derived by closing the R&D department. *** Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. *** Smart policy would be to keep an eye on the future. It is coming. *** Ignorance is no protection against reality. *** Why I was a History major (And no, it's not 'an History major.' That sounds retarded. The first rule of grammar is you don't have to do it if it sounds retarded.) *** The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it. *** Luck is the residue of design. *** The Theory of Escalating Commitment: The cost of continuing mistakes is borne by others, while the cost of admitting mistakes is borne by yourself. *** If you give people the means to hurt you, and they do it, and you take no action except to continue giving them the means to hurt you, and they take no action except to keep hurting you, then one of the ways you can describe the situation is "it isn't scaling well". *** Inefficiency scales really well. *** The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. *** One other thing that you need to do is state your assumptions in advance. This is particularly important for papers in areas like networking and security, where the lack of a proper network performance model or threat model can make a paper almost meaningless ("assume a perfectly spherical elephant of negligible mass and volume"). *** It's extraordinary. It's always the children that say "Sir, Sir, what's the point of geometry?" or "What's the point of Latin?" who end up having no job, being alcoholic and they don't notice that the ones who actually find knowledge for its own sake and pleasure of information and the history and the world and nature around us, actually getting on and doing things with their fucking lives. It's an odd thing. *** Simple systems will be gamed and you'll notice it. Complex systems will be hacked and you won't. *** The perfect level of pedantry is your own. Any more than yours is fussy. Any less than yours is sloppy. *** Nothing is so vile that you cannot find someone to support it. *** The goal for women in life is to find interesting and rewarding things to do. The goal for men in life is to find interesting and rewarding things to do in between times of having sex. *** I don't think anyone has to worry about widespread deployment of competence. *** The universe does not bargain. *** Nature bats last. *** I found that just surviving was a noble fight. *** survival is its own form of torture *** It's the devil in me that's unlevelling me *** Say goodbye to the oldies but goodies The good old days weren't always good *** If you wonder what anyone thinks of you, consider what you think of them. *** ... the ancient Roman Gaius Plinius Secundus, better known as Pliny the Elder. His natural history is the great encyclopaedia, covering all human knowledge at that time. "Life," he said, "is my subject". *** No! It looks like five delicious minutes of TOTAL FUN. *** When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people. *** Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is. *** In a representative democracy, you don't have to buy off all the people, just the representatives. *** ... so you'd rather know the truth and be mad? No, I wanted the truth to be different. *** Guilt is praying for the past to be different. Complaining is praying for the present to be different. Worrying is praying for the future to be different. *** Most things are easy. Finding out just how easy they are is the hard bit. *** It's important to have tea every day. If you don't, your life will get savage. *** Working, yet not taking credit. Work is done, then forgotten. Therefore, it lasts forever. *** My people rang me up a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, I've got people ... and a phone ... and a grasp on the passage of time. *** Whatever happens from now on, you stand firm and face your destiny without fear but with courage. *** the game was to just find something about everything to be glad about -- no matter what twas. *** ... love is effective. You can reject a lot of insane bullshit and bad ideas simply because they are incompatible with love. *** Always give Love the right of first refusal. *** Happiness is the amount of love you have in your life. The only real success is robust, loving relationships. *** Happiness writes in white ink on a white page. *** A hug is better than all the theology in the world. *** when you do the thing you do with joy you create a thing of beauty *** I had to learn the bad spells so that the good spells would have power. *** to stop things that shouldn't be and help things that should *** How wonderful ... these normal days are. *** Even after all this time The sun never says to the earth, "You owe Me." Look what happens with A love like that, It lights the Whole Sky. *** The things that we see And the lights they reflect Exist in our minds As one and the same. Yet a difference much harder Still to detect Is whether we're playing Or part of the game. *** I just wanted your light to shine on me so I don't get swallowed up by the darkness. *** My debt to you, Beloved is one I cannot pay in any coin of any realm on any reckoning day. *** For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'He reminds me of you' *** [He] looked upon all of this as if it was a game, the rules of which he tried hard to learn precisely, but the contents of which did not touch his heart. *** Could I behold this and live? Alas! Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated. *** When I forget and strive for my own happiness It always ends in tears. *** I wanted to be happy. And I wanted to make someone else happy. That was all. So where did I go wrong? *** Happiness is future sadness. *** Happiness is junk food. *** Hope smiles only to deceive If your plan depends on hope Get another plan *** Gambling is the triumph of hope over reason. That tells you all you need to know about hope. *** Life is a wood chipper for your hopes and dreams. *** Every day I love you Every night I wish for another day *** I don't care I believe it even if it isn't true *** If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. *** It is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them. *** I have observed friendship as one observes high holy days: breathtakingly short, whirlwinds of intimate endeavour, frenzied carousing, the sharing of food, of wine, of honey. Compressed, always, and gone as soon as they come. *** Giving a dog kind-of-love to cat people. *** I love you more than any hurt could ever hurt me. *** Life Is living without Those you couldn't live without *** In childhood, we cry out loud to get what we love When we grow up, we cry silently to forget what we love *** Judas Kiss, you called it Such a clever fucking name I miss you so bad I may never get well It's so sad, such a goddamn shame *** Everybody has moments of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, everything else in life becomes eerily easy. *** I dream of friends that never stay long I dream of loves that never choose me I dream of roads that never lead home I dream of me's that never have dreams *** Here to make the world a little better for a short time for a precious few *** That's what I came here to learn: it doesn't matter whether I communicate or not. I chose this whole lifetime to share with anybody the way the world is put together and I might as well have chosen it to say nothing at all. *** No, I've had my say. So choose your rage and fume away.